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CNET Editors' Rating

The GoodThe EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked is the most power-efficient card in its category; $40 less than its primary competition.

The BadSlowest performance among its peers.

The Bottom LineWe don't think most gamers shopping for a midrange 3D card are looking for power efficiency, but for those conscientious few, the EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked is the card for you. Otherwise, you can get noticeably more performance and capability from an only slightly more expensive ATI card.

7.3 Overall

Design8.0

Features7.0

Performance7.0

Review Sections

If you analyze the various components in the name "EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked," you can actually learn a bit about its provenance. At its core you'll find the GeForce GTX 260, an Nvidia 3D chip design released in June of 2008. "Core 216" refers to the fact that this is the second issue of this chip, with 216 processing cores, compared with 192 in the original. That it is "Superclocked" means that EVGA has tweaked this $260 card's clock speed to eke out more performance. Despite all of that speed boosting, we found this card is actually very power efficient. Unfortunately, efficiency in 3D cards doesn't typically translate to speed, and if you spend just a little bit more you'll find a significantly faster graphics card powered by ATI.

EVGA Geforce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked

Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2

Price

$259

$299

Manufacturing process

55nm

55nm

Core clock

576MHz

625MHz (2)

Stream processors

216

800 (2)

Stream processor clock

1242 MHz

NA

Memory

898MB

2GB

Memory speed

1GHz DDR3

933MHz DDR3

Like most cards in this price range, the EVGA GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 Superclocked (chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo), is a double-wide card that connects directly to your PC's power supply, in this case via two six-pin PCI Express power connectors. Unlike the competing midrange card from ATI, Radeon HD 4850 X2, this EVGA card has only a single 3D chip. The only Nvidia dual-chip card is the very high-end GeForce GTX 295. We love that card in its price category, but it's certainly not the most affordable product out there, nor is it appropriate for those of you with smaller monitors. As you'll see in our charts, regardless of the number of GPUs onboard, the GTX 260 Core 216 isn't quite up to par with the other cards at or around this price.

Of the three cards we tested, the GTX 260 Core 216 is the slowest. Its frame rates on all but Crysis are playable, so it's by no means incapable, but current relative speeds also provide a guide for which cards might perform well on more demanding titles down the road. All other things being equal, we expect this EVGA card will hit its playability limit on future titles more quickly than the Radeon HD 4850 X2 will.